Happy iPhone Day!

Unless you're living in a cave somewhere, or you actively avoid technology news, it's likely that you're aware of the iPhone's impending release. At 6pm tonight (it's a rolling release, at 6pm in each time zone) at Apple Stores and AT&T Stores across the US, the much anticipated iPhone will be available for purchase. In some places, people are already lining up (and have been for days), though I was at the Maine Mall the yesterday, and the AT&T Store there didn't look any busier than normal. The kind of hype and excitement surrounding the iPhone's release is the kind usually reserved for the latest video game console, and is unprecedented for a cell phone. Leave it to Apple to turn a convention on its ear, huh?

Predictably, along with the hype, come the haters. Nay-sayers who love nothing more than to tear apart whatever is popular at the moment. In some cases, they have a point. The iPhone doesn't have as many features as some other Smart Phones, and it is limited to AT&T, and doesn't include any expansion slots or a user-replaceable battery. Sure, the iPhone isn't the cure for cancer or a solution to poverty - I'm told it won't even painlessly remove warts or whiten teeth as widely speculated - but there is a very good reason that people are so excited about the iPhone. It's not the advertising hype, it's not the Apple brand itself, it's the interface.

Repeat after me: It's all about the interface.

It's all about the interface.

Interface design is one of the most important, and least appreciated, aspects of product design. It's under appreciated because when it's done well, you hardly notice. When's the last time you thought about how to operate a light switch? Or how to use a pair of scissors? When's the last time you forgot which way to turn the steering wheel in your car to make it go right? These are all examples of interface designs that are so sensible, or at least consistent, that you don't even think about it any more. There's no reason why clock-wise should translate into "turn right". While the top of the wheel is rotated towards the right, the bottom is rotated towards the left, and the wheel itself doesn't move in either direction, it just spins in place. However, it is such a convention at this point that we don't even think about it. This convention is carried into many other products as well. If you were to encounter a product that turned this convention on its ear, for example a stereo that required you to turn the volume knob to the left to turn the volume up, it would be confusing and disorienting. That would be very poor interface design.

Note that I said "turn the volume knob to the left", but you still knew that I meant "counter-clockwise", didn't you?

So what do light switches, steering wheels, and volume knobs have to do with the iPhone? Simply put, the interface design of most cell phones sucks. Modern cell phones are notorious for overly complicated, labyrinthine menus that must be slogged through to perform the simplest of functions. My cell phone, which is made my LG, is relatively easy to use, but some tasks that should be simple are not. As an illustrative example, let's try turning the ringer off:

First, I have to push the blue "OK" button to bring up the main menu. There is little indication that the OK button will do this, except for a red "Menu" blob above it at the bottom of the screen. I know, because I have read the manual, that the red blob is telling be what the blue OK button does, but there is no logical, or natural, connection between the two. Next, I go over to the Settings & Tools menu tab and down to Sounds. Initially I tried System and Call Settings before trying Sounds. From there I select Call Sounds. Here I am presented with Call Ringtone and Call Vibrate. Why the option to turn off the ringer is part of the ringtone menu eludes me. Among other things, this necessitates choosing your ringtone again when you want to turn it back on. Given that they are arbitrarily labeled "Ringtone 1", Ringtone 2" etc., I have to listen to each one to figure out which one it is that I liked. Here I'm presented with four options: Caller ID, no Caller ID, Restrict Calls, and All Calls. Going into the All Calls menu I scroll all the way to the bottom and select "No Ring".

This is a completely arbitrary multi-step process - seven steps in all - for something that I would think would be a common request. This same procedure must be followed to turn the ring tones back on. And really, mine is one of the easiest to use cell phones I've seen in years. Every time a relative gets a new cell phone, I end up sitting down with it for some time, trying to figure out how to do things so that I can teach the phone's owner how to do them. My mother still hasn't figured out how to use her phone's call waiting feature, and often complains that it beeps at her during calls. Given the level of technology we are capable of, this state of affairs is ridiculous. Phones, portable or otherwise, should not be this difficult to use.

Enter the iPhone. I'm realistic, I don't expect the iPhone to answer all of the little annoyances mentioned above. Whenever the number of functions excedes the number of controls, operation necessarily becomes a bit arbitrary, but it can still be logical and easy to follow. And it certainly solves the primary problem above: The iPhone has a switch on the side that turns the ringer on and off. When designing an interface, make simple actions simple and complex actions explicable.

The reason most people - including myself - are psyched for the iPhone is that it looks as if this will finally be the phone that works the way we want it to. The key is the fact that the majority of the interface is virtual, so that the whole thing can be re-arranged to account for the current action. For example, were my mother using an iPhone as another call came in, she would be presented with two large buttons, one offering to put the current call on hold and pick up the new call, and the other offering to ignore the new call and send it to voice mail (there may be a third "3-way calling" option, I'm not sure, but I thought I saw something about that). She wouldn't have to remember that the Send button doubles as a Flash button for switching between calls (she shouldn't even have to remember what a "Flash" button is). At any given time, the interface will show you only what you can do at that moment. As I mentioned above, when the number of features exceeds the number of controls, things become arbitrary. The iPhone's virtual interface goes a long way towards addressing that problem by showing you, to the best of its ability, only what you can do at that moment. Each possible action represented as a single clearly labeled button as in the Call Waiting example.

Despite the fact that the iPhone is a very complicated device, the interface has been thought out in such a way as to make it easy to use. But that's not the coolest part.

More important are the "natural" cues that have been programmed into it. By natural cues, I mean the kinds of things that humans are programmed to expect after thousands of years of dealing with the world we inhabit. Objects have mass and behave in a certain way, interacting with objects causes things to happen, etc. The iPhone's interface has been designed with this in mind. The clearest example, and one that can be seen in several of the recent commercials, is how scrolling works. In order to scroll through a list, you place your finger on the screen and drag it one way or the other, as if you were moving a paper tape over the surface. Beyond this, and far more impressive, the list has mass and inertia. If you fling it, it will keep moving for a time, then slow to a stop. When you hit the end of the list, it bounces slightly, in the manner of a retractable cord that's been pulled out as far as it will go. With these two relatively simple interface details, the list becomes a physical thing that you can interact with. In other words, you know how it works without thinking about it.

How many times have you come to the end of a list on your computer or cell phone, and had to push down a few more times just to be sure you're at the end? How many times have you thought you'd gone all the way to the top or bottom of a list, only to realize some time later that you hadn't? This simple bounce is a subtle but very clear clue that you've gone as far as you can. Both the bounce and the inertia also go a long way towards eliminating some of the abruptness inherent in most graphical interfaces. In the real world, movement and sound don't start and stop with abruptness, and when they do the effect is unsettling. It also makes things hard to follow and track. This is the reason I never, ever use page down when scrolling a document or web page. Pressing Page Down causes the entire thing to abruptly change, with no visual clue as to what has happened, or how far we've gone. Sometimes the last line is still visible as the first line on screen, but that still takes a moment to register, and I always fear I've gone too far or missed something. And what if I've hit it twice by accident? Or the program I'm using interprets Page Down differently? Internal links (the kind that take you to a different part of the same page) are even worse. Have I jumped to a new page? Where am I in relation to where I started? Hard core techies will laugh at me for this, but it's honestly the way I feel and I'm certain I'm not alone. This is basic to the psychology of objects and interaction.

The simplest way to avoid this particular confusion is to cause the document to slide, rather than jump. This can be done very quickly, but so long as it registers, there's no confusion as to what happened. Check this out for a rough example of what I'm talking about. By incorporating natural movement and inertia into scrolling on the iPhone, everything moves in entirely explicable ways. There's no confusion and you feel like you're in control at all times, because you get this. Brilliant.

Another great example is the spelling correction feature. If you misspell a word while typing, a bubble appears under the offending word with a suggested correction. If you choose to go with the suggestion, the incorrect word fades away and the correct word slides up into place. There is absolutely no confusion as to whether the correction has taken place or not (I can't be the only one who double checks just to be sure). In the real world, in order to replace something, you move it out of the way and then move the replacement into the vacated space. Again, the graphical interface of the iPhone mimics the natural cues of real life, letting you know what's going on in a subtle and unobtrusive way.

For these reasons, and countless others expounded elsewhere, the nay-sayers who point out the iPhone's short comings are missing the point, the same way they missed the point when the iPod was released without a radio tuner or voice recorder. In the end, the user experience sold it, and then some. Personally, I'm psyched about the iPhone. Not so much the device itself (I can't begin to afford one), but the ideas it brings to the table. With luck, it will work as advertised, and will completely re-write the rules for how cell phones work. Hopefully the iPhone will wake cell phone makers up to the fact that phones should be designed with the end user's ease of use in mind, and the torrent of crap they've been producing for decades will finally end. Hopefully.

On the other hand, if the iPhone fails to live up to its promises, it will be very bad. People like myself, and even more so people who actually bought one, will be outraged. We will show no mercy if this is the case, having been mislead into false praise and false hope. This would not only be bad for Apple, but for the cell phone using public. If the iPhone fails, people will take this to mean that the concepts it embodies are no good. The industry will just keep doing what it's been doing with the rational that it has worked so far, and the iPhone didn't.

If that happens, it will be very bad indeed. Here's hoping Apple's up to the challenge.

P.S.: In case you can't tell, issues of interface design and interaction interest me greatly. The iPhone is only one example of a technology (whether high or low tech) that fascinates and excites me. Expect more posts in the future about related issues. I'm not an expert, I'm just a regular guy who loves these kinds of ideas and loves sharing them with the world to see what people think. Check out The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman for a fascinating (if dated) look at these issues.